Josh
by Nurse Betty Page
Summary: After learning his wife had not been killed byu the UNA, Josh is reunited with her - but what of the psychological scars that will remain etched into his shattered sense of security? How will Josh cope with knowing Steph expects him to carry on with life, now he knows the imagined pain of losing her? Josh and his demons. Rated T for language.
**'Josh'**

 **Summary:**

 **Josh had dealt with the emotional scarring of living through the belief that his wife was dead, but as he now comes to terms with the fact that she is alive, he struggles to pull back from the brink of a breakdown – and finds compassion and understanding from an unlikely source, which leads to a situation that will weigh heavily on his conscience...**

 **Characters: Josh/Steph Sasha**

 **Set as they wake together, and takes an AU turn, set after Josh is reunited with his wife.  
**

 **Rated: T for language**

 **Warnings: None, but does contain thoughts leaning to mental breakdown.**

 **Disclaimer: I own nothing but my love of this fandom!**

* * *

Josh

He woke beside her as the heat started to rise and the damaged walls let in shards of light that felt like fire. Josh didn't know what this day would bring – perhaps none of them would live to see another day, he didn't know anything anymore because his head felt like a storm had brewed up inside it and the pressure of may as well have blown off the top of his skull.

 _But she was there, she was really there._

 _Alive, breathing, Not dead and buried and worm food like he had imagined._

 _She wasn't risen from the dead, she was simply there, still alive._

 _He wanted to be happy but the relief of holding her made the crack in his heart hurt the ache in his head as he tried to untwist his mind around the skewed idea that his wife had been murdered._

 _No,. She was still here._

 _He had to get used to that..._

Steph was beside him, and he held her tighter and squeezed her and she gave a little groan of protest and shifted as his grip loosened about her wait, and then she slept on. He pressed his face against her hair and inhaled the scent of her – not sweet after all they had been through but oh, so _very_ much alive and real.

 _Here she was, breathing beside him._

He wanted to kiss her as the love he felt for her washed over him like a tidal wave that threatened to sweep him away, but it was all consuming and the dead but not dead and now alive reality was threatening to burst his heart.

He let go of her gently and then got up, she turned over and gave a sigh and carried on sleeping and he looked down at her as he wished he could save the moment forever, like he wanted to stuff her inside a bubble that nothing could break, keep her there like a ship in a bottle, trapped forever in this moment that told him she was still alive.

He watched the rise and fall of her chest and then the twitch of her eyelids as she slept on, counting the breaths, watching the movement, reminding himself she really was alive. Then he turned away and walked carefully past others who were still sleeping and wasn't sure if he wanted to be alone so he could weep or simply because he felt he needed space to breathe. It wasn't the heat that stifled him even though he was sure it ought to be – it was inside him, too much to carry, pain he couldn't shift. The images that had haunted him after grieving her death and imagining the horror of it played through his head again, memories that were false yet refused to melt away.

Those images stayed sharp in his mind, Steph, the love of his life, dead in so many different and horrible ways, the woman who he had thought of as his strength, gone. Her and his child. Everything he had lived for, gone.

 _But it wasn't true._

He knew he ought to be glad, but the pain was swirling and that storm as building again in his mind. Carrying so much pain and then having that weight lifted away, was that enough to drive a man to insanity? He didn't know the answer, because the way the world used to be was gone and all the counsellors were dead. Perhaps this was how it would be from now on, if they survived and managed to pull together some semblance of a life, maybe they would carry on and maybe in a strange kind of way just being together would make up for the fact that the rest of the world was blown away to dust.

And he would smile again and laugh and hold her and look into her eyes – and inside forever be that little bit fucked in the head, screwed over by his own knowledge that once he had lived through her death and now he knew how it felt to lose her. He knew how it felt to lose his family and yet they were still here. He just had to live with the grief, even though it no longer existed in reality.

" _Josh?"_

He had found a dark and quiet place away from the others, away from the shards of light that cut through and added to the stifling heat, and that moment of silence had done nothing to ease his pain or calm the storm in his mind. But hearing her call his name so softly had turned his head.

"Where are you going?" Sasha asked him.

In the gloom she looked so ghostly, as shards of light cut through damaged walls far behind her and dust from those walls seemed to float as if caught in the light.

"Nowhere," Josh replied, "I was just thinking..I don't know..."

Sasha looked at him curiously, seeing a look in his eyes that seemed to make no sense, as if he was lost and had forgotten, just for a moment, exactly where he was.

"Are you okay?" she asked him.

Her words opened up a floodgate and he put his hands to his face and started to sob. Then he was shaking and wondering how he was still standing as his body weakened, but she had him, her arms were around him and the closeness of her was welcome because for just a moment, it distracted from his pain.

"Are you okay?" she asked again.

He pulled back from her embrace and looked into her eyes, the noticed her hair half shaded her face. He reached up and swept it aside and caught a look of surprise about her gaze.

"I don't know if anything will ever be okay, I just don't know," he said quietly, and then he pulled her close and kissed her and Sasha froze, and as she froze, he pulled back, looking downwards as she looked over her shoulder, her gaze shifting to Captain Murdock, who was still sleeping.

"I have to go," she said, "And I think your _wife_ will be awake soon, Josh."

He found it hard to meet her gaze as the warmth of her kiss lingered and he wondered why the hell he had done that. Maybe it was because they were on the edge of everything, about to slide over into oblivion or to find a way to survive this. He felt caught on the razors edge and that kiss had reminded him he was very much alive.

 _But Steph's mouth was also warm and he loved her – what the hell had he just kissed Sasha for?_

Sasha didn't know, because he had caught that look in her eyes, a look that said perhaps she wanted to say, _You fucking maniac_ , and possibly laugh – or maybe slap his face for making such a sudden uninvited move.

"The world has gone to hell, maybe I have too. I'm sorry," he said to her.

Then Josh walked away and Sasha watched him leave as he passed through ghostly shards of slight where dust floated as the heat rose, and she wished she had never asked him what was wrong, because all she had seen in his eyes was a look of loss, or at least the look of a man who _believed_ he had lived through loss, and she guessed no matter how many times he reminded himself that his worst fears had been proved wrong, something would always be broken. Josh had changed in such a way that even if all the pieces came back together, he would never be the same again, not after having his heart shattered by grief - even if that grief had been proven untrue – Josh was different now.

End.


End file.
